Suicide bombing kills policeman in Pakistani capital (Second Lead)

Islamabad, March 23 (DPA) A policeman was killed and several people were injured Monday in a suicide bombing outside an office of the police’s intelligence wing in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, security officials said.

The bomber blew himself up when a police guard stopped him at the gate of the police’s special branch, located in the heart of the city, just a few hundred yards away from the headquarters of the premier military Inter-Service Intelligence agency.

“One policeman died in the explosion while another was critically wounded,” Interior Secretary Kamal Shah said. Several civilians were also injured.

The blast damaged a mosque adjacent to the police office. A witness said the suicide bomber was in his 20s. “He argued with the police guard for quite some time and then detonated himself,” said Ramzan Ahmad.

Pakistan has seen a series of suicide attacks over the last two years, including several in Islamabad and its adjoining garrison city of Rawalpindi.

Last week, 11 people died in a suicide bombing on a busy street near a bus depot in Rawlapindi and more than a dozen were injured.

“Both attacks are inter-linked. Their objective is to scare the security personnel,” Pakistan’s top security official Rehman Malik told reporters at the scene.